Posted
by
Zonk
on Friday March 17, 2006 @12:21PM
from the what-a-nice-guy dept.

The Guardian Gamesblog has a talk up with Shigeru Miyamoto, where they get into his views on the PS3 delay, and the industry as a whole. From the article: "Any announcement about PS3 will affect Nintendo. But we don't see it as a competition between the two consoles, although the customers always do. It depends on what expectations people have of the PS3 and Revolution. Sony has taken a long time to create their machine but it is obvious that the direction we (Nintendo) are taking is different to the PS3."

Nintendo is trying for a much different audience. Not the college kids getting together for Halo/Ghost Recon/Counterstrike matches, not the 80hours/week MMORPG addicts, not the fans who buy consoles just for sports games.

Nintendo is going for the casual "family" audience. Nintendo is going for what made the original NES great. I hope they can pull it off. Nintendo right now is competing with themselves, not MS or Sony.

IMHO it's a matter of price. In the XBox/PS2/Gamecube generation the price separation was less, but still there. In this coming generation the price separation is widening. To buy the XBox-360/PS3, gaming has to be a higher priority in your life to justify the money. That narrows it down to harder-core gamers, which tends to mean more intense games. The market it appears that Nintendo is going after wants a bit more, the way technology always seems to deliver, but isn't willing to make it a high priority, financially.

seriously, console manufacturers design with long term cost cuts in mind these days. Sony and MS will hit the hardcore up for whatever they can and then gradually drop the price, subsidising losses with software and accessory sales.

Still, the price of a PS2 isn't nearly what I expected it to be - though I do see the original XBox for about $100. I think I saw the PS2 at Best Buy last month for like 179 and scoffed loudly enough for the entire store to hear, but now I see it on Amazon for 149. And yes, I know all of their sales associates have copulated with the Devil's rigid, icy member. I hate them too.

I'm sure I could get a well-loved console for next to nothing, but I don't want that.

And then the Neo Geo was spawned, where we all found out that there is indeed an upper limit to what the "average gamer" is willing to pay.You know, this is an attitude that ticks me off that is being championed. "Ganers" do not have unlimited wallets or the desire to have those wallets vacuumed. Yes, I am willing to pay more for hardware or software that is substantially different or more advanced. No, I am not willing to pay more for something that is extremely similar but has a "gamer" label slapped on i

I think Nintendo is mostly betting on the existence of a market that doesn't want to spend $400-500 for a console that has a huge catalog of $60 titles that can mostly be sliced into categories like Yet Another Shooter Part IV and Major Sports Game Early January 2007 Edition.In other words, it's all about the software. A good comparison comes from looking at the Nintendo DS and the PSP. The PSP is an amazing and sexy little piece of hardware with a catalog of same-old, same-old games. The DS is an unsexy, s

I have no interest in either the cost or the catalogs for either the 360 or the prospective PS3. The Revolution interests me both for my kids and for myself, and is far easier on the pocketbook to contemplate.

The other two consoles are positing the existence of a much, much wider hardcore gamers' market than exists, and pricing themselves out of a significant share of that.

Nintendo is also, astonishingly, the only player that's projecting any sense of fricking fun with its products. It's amazing.

Why do that when you can build a decent gaming PC for $600? The mouse is a superior controller, you can get joysticks if you want, you have the internet connection already, and you can play a huge array of games.

Why [spend $400 on a console] when you can build a decent gaming PC for $600?

Because on the PC, you typically need a cluster in order to handle four simultaneous players (combination of one or more of you, your kids, their play dates). Such a cluster costs $2400 and needs an extra monitor for each player. A console, on the other hand, costs only $200 to $400 and can use the same monitor that you already use for your DVD player. It would be different if you could plug four gamepads into a machine and hav

I've been playing games for twenty years and I honestly can't agree with "360/PS3 is for the hardcore market". I would call myself hardcore, but the Xbox had very few worth while games and the 360 so far has none and well I don't see anything on the PS3 worth watching.The MS and Sony market is the "upgrade" market. They just remade their current consoles with better stuff inside it. Then upped the price and continued down the same path. There really is nothing remotely hardcore about them or the catalog of

"I'd like to see the Revolution do well, and I think it will. But I'm a little bit of a fanboy, just praying it doesn't sink."

I didn't used to be a Nintendo fanboy. I didn't play the GBA too much, and I played more PS than N64. But then I bought a DS. Once I saw how cool and useful the touch screen was, I was more than ready to listen to whatever they were pitching for their innovative new console, especially at the $150-$250 price range. Unless it's the next Virtual Boy, I'm planning on picking one up shor

- The controllers (extra buttons make it flexible for use in a number of roles, like the N64's was, and the GameCube's isn't)- I'm not sure what a mechanical eject lever is, but I'm pretty sure the PS2 has one too now. Not that there was anything wrong with a completely ordinary DVD-drive tray- Price: hardly relevant anymore. They're both rock-bottom.- Third-party game catalog focused on variety and just good games.

"- The controllers (extra buttons make it flexible for use in a number of roles, like the N64's was, and the GameCube's isn't)- I'm not sure what a mechanical eject lever is, but I'm pretty sure the PS2 has one too now. Not that there was anything wrong with a completely ordinary DVD-drive tray"GCN controller has the same number of buttons as the N64... they just rolled the C-Buttons into a stick... The C-Buttons were designed to be camera control buttons, but got outfitted to a numerous amount of other us

- Power switch on the back turns the unit off, but not on. Doesn't retract the drive tray, unless you flip it to "on" while the tray is out.- Power switch on the front, when pressed, pulls in the drive tray and resets the console.- Power switch on the front turns the unit on, but not off, unless you hold it down, which is as far from obvious as you can get. Also pulls in the tray before turning the unit off, which isn't all that obvious either.

There's plenty wrong with an "ordinary" DVD drive tray. It's inherently more complicated and fragile than a simple mechanical door, so you have to keep it away from children.When I say "bizarre", I'm referring to the combination of the drive tray and the power button, which you must admit is just strange:

- Power switch on the back turns the unit off, but not on. Doesn't retract the drive tray, unless you flip it to "on" while the tray is out.- Power switch on the front, when pressed, pulls in the drive tr

The "power" button on the front of the PS2 is 2 things:1. If the unit is in "standby", pressing the button brings out of standby and boots.2. If the unit is "in use" and the button is tapped, it acts as a full-reset button for the system. This causes the system to reboot, and hence drags the tray in so that it can boot whatever is in the tray.3. If the unit is "in use" and the button is pressed >2 secs(?), it places the unit in standby, after ensuring the drive tray is "put away". This way it doesn'

Shouldn't any machine capable of playing the FPS games also be capable of playing the "family" games?

It should, but the reverse isn't necessarily true: a machine capable of playing the "family" games may not be capable of playing the high-performance FPS/driving/simulation games.

So it makes sense that a company like Nintendo, who has always had a focus on gameplay over glitter, would distance themselves from the textured-polygon arms race -- but I don't understand why Sony and Microsoft, and their developer

I agree that Nintendo is trying to pitch to a family audience the other two have been outcooling themselves away from. It's not necessarily that they wanted to be focused only on their core of support, though. The DS had launch titles and so on being pitched with the supposedly-edgy theme "Touching is okay," and seemed to be attempting to bring their demographic up the age chart a while.

It's not clear that it happened for them. In retrospect it looks like the DS has thrived because it was trying to do something a little different, unlike the competition -- but did it really crack that older demographic?

Personally I am the family market, with two 12-year-olds. I'm also the older market: I'm 38, and I've bought my share of games, though none for myself in the last year-plus.

The Revolution is where my money will go, no question, for the simple reason that it's going to be far less expensive to buy for my kids, it has a tiny sense of innocence to it which I think you kind of fricking want in a game, and it's going to be actually interesting to see new titles because of the funky controller.

So they got me in both senses. Even if I was just buying for myself, what would make me want a PS3 or XBox? The incremental changes in hardware specs are dullsville. Shaq sweats on screen, but the game mechanics still don't let him rebound with any realism at all. At that price, too, for my limited taste in games now, no way. (That's leaving alone the cost of real HD, which I'm not going to be picking up in the next year or two.)

Both MS and Sony have vastly overshot me, as a market. Nintendo hasn't, and they're trying to rediscover the fun in the whole thing. They win my cash.

The Revolution is where my money will go, no question, for the simple reason that it's going to be far less expensive to buy for my kids, it has a tiny sense of innocence to it which I think you kind of fricking want in a game, and it's going to be actually interesting to see new titles because of the funky controller.

While the console itself is important, and I think your image of it is dead on, it's not just the console you need to buy: there are games too. There will undoubtedly be a healthy amount o

[Nintendo's not going for] the college kids getting together for Halo/Ghost Recon/Counterstrike matches,

In my experience, there are at least as many casual college gamers as those who consider themselves "hardcore". The casual ones seem to have given up on modern games, only playing things like old consoles and casual PC games (and, of course, when I pull out Guitar Hero).

You might say that this is the "casual" audience, but then there are people like me who really used to be gamers but have burned out b

... can Miyamoto's vision of a PS3/XBox 360 peacefully coexhisting with a Revolution in the same living room be real? He states it himself when he said that the customer sees the systems as competition. He's going to have to find a way to convince everyone in the world that they are both worth the time and money.

I love Nintendo, but it seems like Miyamoto's sitting there, looking at the cup of hemlock. Just like Socrates. Both are/were in high spirits and thought their course of action was for the best. Hopefully Nintendo avoids this fate.

On further reflection, it's not quite that good of an analogy, as Socrates was ordered to drink his...

I think it is and here is why, that is the state of things in the US right now many households eather have 2 or three consoles attached to one TV or PS2s Xboxes and Gamecubes attached to diffrent TVs. I see no reason for this to change for the new generation because even if the consoles are exspensive there are always going to be diffrent tastes in games among the people in a household.

Wow...what a great troll! You even managed to fit some ancient Greek philosophy in there - good for you!Competition is good for everyone, as long as the competition exists in the media and not in business practices. The console flame wars are ensuring that more people will buy all three. (Just like boy band rivalries ensure higher record sales on both sides.)

That said, Nintendo's marketing has tried to convert to a sort of "intra-genre" format. They're framing the current media storm so that they are on

Allow me to clarify. When I say that Miyamoto may be staring at the Hemlock, I mean the idea that consumers (will) view the Rev as a completely differt product. Your average non-gamer consumer, or what have you is not nearly as well informed. I'm surprised all the time by people who don't know what an X Box is (no, I don't live on a farm). Or people who buy a game expecting it to work on any old system (mostly parents). Just listen in on a few conversations at Wal-Mart or Target. Many people genuinly

I think Nintendo has the perfect way to coutneract that particular issue. When you're in Wal-Mart, and there's two demo stations with standard controllers, and a 3rd demo station with a remote control that people are waving around, you're gonna notice a difference.

Then maybe this move on Nintendo's part is a good thing. Sony and Microsoft are drowning each other out in similar rhetoric, a shared library of ports, and a general dissociation from the game content that their machines run; that can't be helping that hurdle get any lower.

This is why I call their strategy "intra-genre." If Nintendo gets the word out that their console is significantly different, Nintendo effectively separates itself from the other two consoles. Effectively this puts their product in

It's my hope that Nintendo can pull it off, and I'm with them all the way. I believe you're right that their pricing model (should be) is thier strongest point (if I read your post correctly). The more reasonable price is like the box is saying, "Hey, we're still in this for the fun."

They make most of the best games I've ever played (Zelda, Mario, Metroid, Smash Bros, Mario Kart...). I'd hate to have to sift through everyone elses trash to find a descent game for all time (I've had to do so as often as I

... can Miyamoto's vision of a PS3/XBox 360 peacefully coexhisting with a Revolution in the same living room be real? He states it himself when he said that the customer sees the systems as competition. He's going to have to find a way to convince everyone in the world that they are both worth the time and money.

When he said that Nintendo is not competing with the PS3/Xbox 360, what he's saying is that the Revolution is intended* for a different living room than the PS3/Xbox 360, not that he sees it coexi

He's going to have to find a way to convince everyone in the world that they are both worth the time and money.

Actually, I don't think so. I would guess that most casual gamers will find the Revolution to be an attractive proposition: Interesting console, acceptable price and fun games for the whole family. Hardcore gamers, on the other hand, don't need to be convinced to buy more than one console. If the Revolution turns out to have a few great games (Metroid Prime Revolution?), they will buy it.

A developer interview normally goes something like this. Turn up, chat to PR (if available, otherwise receptionist) meet head dev guy, chat about game and marvel at high level of caffeine-inspired dedication on display. But having an interview delayed because the developer is having his photo taken with the preceding journalist? Nah, never happened. Until yesterday that is, but then Shigeru Miyamoto isn't your average game creator. His mightily impressive CV - Mario, Zelda, Pikmin (hey, I liked it) - means

Seems to me that Miyamoto's view that the PS3 and Rev are non-competitors is shared by his audience - and that if he does feel that way then answering questions about the PS3 seems out of his realm of concern.
Makes me wonder why, given the opportunity to talk shop with the Uber-mancer at Nintendo Guardian chose to base the brunt of their discussion on PS3. Are they trying to hype that near-dead horse into a fine paste?
Or is it (as my title suggests) just nonsequitous sensationalism?

Personally both the 360 and PS3 hold no interest to me whatsoever, and I've been playing games since the heady days of Monkey Island and FF VI. Both of them have very strong corporate agendas behind them, and they don't include gaming (remember, the thing you buy a GAMES console for?)Microsoft wants to push Windows and their own online services into the living room, and they're not exactly responsible in the way they approach business. Sony on the other hand wants to push Blu-ray, not to mention having a re